Dáil Éireann Debate, Tuesday - 15 February 2022
233. Deputy Chris Andrews asked the Minister for the Environment, Climate and Communications the funding and resources that will be made available for insulation of flat complexes and public housing stock; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [8400/22]
View answerThe Government has approved a package of supports as part of the delivery of Ireland’s residential retrofit programme. These measures are aimed at making it easier and more affordable for homeowners to undertake home energy upgrades, for warmer, healthier and more comfortable homes, with lower energy bills.
Included in these measures is the establishment of the new National Home Energy Upgrade Scheme, offering increased grant levels of up to 50% of the cost of a typical B2 home energy upgrade with a heat pump (up from the current level of 30-35%).
The new National Home Energy Upgrade Scheme is a demand-led initiative that introduces a new way to undertake home energy upgrades with One-Stop-Shops providing an end-to-end service for homeowners. This includes surveying the home; designing the upgrades; managing the grant process; helping with access to finance; engaging contractors to deliver the work; and quality assuring the work.
Homes, built and occupied pre-2011, and owned by private homeowners, non-corporate landlords and Approved Housing Bodies are eligible for the scheme.
It is also worth noting that a key feature of the new one stop shop model is that it will bring together groups of homes for aggregated projects thereby creating efficiencies in delivery and developing new innovation in processes and technologies.
More broadly, officials of my Department will be working with Sustainable Energy Authority of Ireland (SEAI) to separately consider the best overall approaches to dealing with apartment buildings that are multi-unit buildings with common areas, rather than individual units. This will be investigated in 2022 to consider approaches to support whole building solutions.
My Department has allocated a total of €267 million in capital funding to the SEAI for residential and community retrofit schemes and the Solar PV scheme in 2022. This is expected to deliver almost 27,000 energy efficiency upgrades, of which over 8,600 will be upgraded to a BER B2 or higher; and 4,240 heat pumps installed.
In addition, the Minister for Housing, Local Government and Heritage will invest a further €85 million as part of the Local Authority Retrofit Programme in 2022 which is expected to deliver approximately 2,400 B2 retrofits of Local Authority homes this year.
